Emotional Archetypes: Music and Neurosciences

Music holds a strange power over our emotions. Through a sentence or texture, a sound event erupts, an attack, a trembling, sometimes only a lonely sigh, and suddenly our entire psychology is turned upside down. "Coming face-to-face with music" is rarely a question of life or death, but our biological reactions can be similar to those during survival situations. This encounter compares and contrasts contributions from neuroscientists and composers, notably during shared listening sessions, on the question of musical archetypes, debating what the "musical survival kit" would contain, the essence of what makes an event (physiological) in music.